27th. December 2013 – 15:00: The Bermuda Triangle.

The legitimate location for the Secondary Regulator AKA that bright yellow button looking thing is on your chest, somewhere within a triangle whose apex is at the suprasternal notch and the base is at the imaginary horizontal line joining the costal cartilage on either side of the base of the rib cage. The yellow hose leading to the first stage is routed under your right arm to streamline your profile while travelling. It is visible at any distance, even when visibility is non-existent. Visible that is, until you first need to use it.

There is a highly refined protocol for the use of this instrument of survival that hopefully would never need to be followed except in a drill:

• Your instructor shuts of the air at the first stage – check.
• You breathe a few times – check.
• You detect that there is no air-flow into your primary regulator – check.
• You signal to your buddy that you are out of air – check.
• You signal to your buddy that you would like to share air – check.
• Your buddy offers you his secondary regulator – check.
• You replace your useless regulator with your buddy’s secondary regulator – check.
• You breathe normally – check.
• You and your buddy end the dive, lock right forearms and ascend normally – check.

You get the drill, right up to the point when you run out of air for the first time.  You can see your buddy, you know where your buddy’s secondary should be, but that location is now a Bermuda Triangle and your buddy’s secondary is lost somewhere in that  space.  It’s at this point, somewhere between despair and mild panic, that you realize what the true value of your buddy is. Your buddy has done all the work for you. You are breathing a lung full of sweet lifesaving air in the space of, wait for it – six seconds.